China Evacuates 600,000 Amid Record Typhoon

[jayfish]

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/12829941/

HONG KONG - China evacuated more than 600,000 people as the strongest typhoon on record to enter the South China Sea in May bore down on the south coast on Wednesday, causing flight and shipping delays around the region.

Typhoon Chanchu, packing winds up to 106 mph, was forecast to make landfall northeast of Hong Kong in Guangdong province later on Wednesday after killing 37 people as it swept across the Philippines last weekend.

Wow that's the 2nd time in a year China has done this. Maybe they could come over and teach FEMA a thing or three.

Jay

[CottonBear]

1. We've outsourced most everything to the Chinese. Why not FEMA too?

600,000 is more people than lived in NOLA. :(

[niyad]

2. let's see--china can evacuate, japan can evacuate, cuba can evacuate-

and yet, for some reason, the US cannot seem to do it. and my little trolls say it's because they are dictatorships, so we wouldn't want to follow their lead. arrrrghhhhh

[Gildor Inglorion]

3. Japan is HARDLY a dictatorship...

they are, however, a highly disciplined society and accustomed to acting as a group. To be fair to FEMA and all others concerned, trying to get citizens of the USA to do as they're told is in the same category as trying to herd cats. Some will hiss, spit, and scratch, but most will just go their own way, ignoring the herder. I guess that's why "catherder" is not a common term. }(

[jayfish]

4. Probably The Same Crowd That Says...

"if I have nothing to hide, I have nothing to worry about" when it comes to the government spying on them.

Jay

[saigon68]

5. Yes a herd of cats would do that

But maybe not, cats aren't total idiots like the security lap dogs of amerika

[Lisa]

7. and India (world's largest democracy) did it ...

I received a note from an Indian grad student, expressing disbelief that Mumbai had set a better example for a rapid urban evacuation than New Orleans did. This man has travelled extensively in Asia and Europe, and he was shocked that "so wealthy a society" as the USA would appear to be so helpless when the disaster had been forseen, in both the short and long term.

[pitohui]

9. new orleans and louisiana are not "so wealthy a society"

nor is mississippi, we are talking abt two of the v. poorest states in the union

no offense to your friend but he needs to turn off the teevee and come down and see how we really live around here

no great wealth here, maybe he is thinking of california or someplace

[Lisa]

10. he's actually seen quite a lot of the US and Canada (and Europe too)

He is from Kerala, which is better off than other parts of India, but quite poor by North American standards. He just came back from working along the India-Pakistan border, so he's seen a lot of places which are not only destitute but have suffered from natural disasters (earthquakes and the tsunami, which took out an aid project he helped with a few years ago) as well as open warfare (something which, mercifully, even Mississippi hasn't suffered since the 1800s).

I don't get into "one-downing" matches with him, even over conditions in North American slums and Canadian aboriginal reserves, because he invariably shows me pictures of places he's been to which have 90% unemployment and 25% infant mortality.

And he does recognize that there can be substantial variability within countries, but his point (and I think yours as well) is that there is a gap between rich and poor -- which appears to be even starker in the US than in his own nation (which has several times more people, but much less capital).

[lovuian]

6. Welcome to Global Warming... going to see more and more of those

:crazy:

[Lisa]

8. so much for Bush's "adaptive" strategy

Several years ago, Bush announced that the US would not be supporting mitigation (prevention) of global warming, but instead would rely on responding to problems as they came up.

Something which evidently did not work despite all the warnings he'd been given about the levees.